1. Field
The present invention relates generally to data communication, and more specifically to techniques for precoding data for a multipath channel in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system.
2. Background
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, with NS≦min {NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels is also referred to as a spatial subchannel of the MIMO channel and corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., increased transmission capacity) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
To increase the overall spectral efficiency of the MIMO system, a data stream may be transmitted on each of the NS spatial subchannels. Each data stream may be processed (e.g., encoded, interleaved, and modulated) to provide a corresponding symbol stream, which is then transmitted over a respective spatial subchannel. Due to scattering in the propagation environment, the NS transmitted symbol streams interfere with each other at the receiver. Each received signal may then include a component of each of the NS transmitted symbol streams.
At the receiver, various equalization techniques may be used to process the NR received signals to recover the NS transmitted symbol streams. These equalization techniques include linear equalization and non-linear equalization techniques. Linear equalization tends to enhance the noise in the received signals, and the noise enhancement may be severe for a multipath channel with frequency selective fading, which is characterized by different channel gains across the system bandwidth. modulation symbols are then precoded based on the equivalent channel response to provide precoded symbols, which are further preconditioned based on the estimated MIMO channel response (e.g., using spatio-temporal pulse-shaping) to provide preconditioned symbols for transmission over the MIMO channel
In another embodiment, a method is provided for processing a data transmission received via a multipath MIMO channel. In accordance with the method, which is performed at a receiver, a number of received signals are initially preconditioned based on an estimated response of the MIMO channel (e.g., using spatio-temporal pulse-shaping) to provide received symbols. The received symbols are then filtered (or equalized) with a feed-forward filter to provide equalized symbols, which are estimates of the modulation symbols that have been precoded at a transmitter prior to transmission over the MIMO channel. A vector modulo-2M operation may be performed on the equalized symbols to provide recovered symbols. The equalized or recovered symbols are then demodulated and decoded to recover the transmitted data. The preconditioning orthogonalizes the received symbol streams, in which case the filtering may be performed separately for each received symbol stream. Channel state information (CSI), which may comprise a sequence of matrices for the estimated MIMO channel response and signal-to-noise-and-interference ratios (SNRs) for a number of transmission channels of the MIMO channel, may be derived and sent back to the transmitter.
For both embodiments, the feed-forward filter may be adapted based on a minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion or some other criterion.
Various aspects and embodiments of the invention are described in further detail below. The invention further provides methods, digital signal processors, transmitter and receiver units, and other apparatuses and elements that implement various aspects, embodiments, and features of the invention, as described in further detail below.